Mountain View Corridor Scaled Back to Two-Lane Road

Apr 23, 2008 by Elizabeth Ziegler

(KCPW News) The Utah Department of Transportation is paring down its proposal for the Mountain View Corridor, which will connect Salt Lake County's west side to northwest Utah County. Project manager Teri Newell says the state doesn't currently have the funding or the need for a freeway right now.

"The reality of delivering this project is that we will not have all the money for the full solution that we see we need in 2030. Nor do we need to implement the 2030 solution right now," Newell says. "So we are trying to do the best thing we can with the taxpayer money by investing in what the initial needs are. But an important thing is preserving the corridor for the future."

UDOT plans to build the corridor in three phases, starting with a two-lane road, which would then be upgraded to meet the growing transportation needs of the region by 2030. Newell says UDOT is seeking environmental clearance for the first two phases, but will NOT seek an environmental impact statement for the third - the freeway phase of the project. Senator Sheldon Killpack says shelving the freeway plan is a good thing. The Davis County Senator has worked closely on the project, and says the new plan will save the state money if the highway needs to be expanded into a freeway in the future.

"What it does allow us to do is to go in and purchase the entire corridor for the entire width," Killpack says. "Because a lot of your costs now and especially in the future, is when you fail to go in and purchase the entire width that you need, then you have encroachment into that corridor, it makes it virtually impossible, just by sheer finances, to build that corridor out eventually."

Tuesday, the city of Lehi agreed to the phased-in approach, cementing UDOT's scaled-down plans. In February, three regional developers donated more than $60 million-worth of land for the Mountain View Corridor in Salt Lake County. Calls to the developers for comments about the new approach to the corridor were not returned.

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